News

In the 36 hours after last week’s deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, 112 Republicans reached out to the election office in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to change their party registration. Ethan Demme was one of them.

The state health department has created a map that lists COVID-19 vaccine providers across Pennsylvania. Providers who currently offer vaccines and those that eventually will as the state’s roll out enters its later stages are included.

A state policy change will leave thousands of children with autism without the regular therapy that helps them learn crucial skills.

In his first speech as top leader of the Pennsylvania Senate last week, Republican Sen. Jake Corman positioned himself as a reformer seeking to restore faith in government by greatly increasing transparency in the legislature and by elected lawmakers.

The state is giving more than $34 million to scores of water cleanup projects across the commonwealth.

Pennsylvania officials announced 5,338 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Monday, and 7,506 from the previous day. The total number of infections since the start of the pandmeic is now 726,154.

Police who guard the Pennsylvania Capitol are working to be more visible and have been coordinating plans with other agencies to secure the building since a violent mob stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol last week, a Department of General Services spokesperson said Monday.

The latest coronavirus relief bill included $7 billion to expand broadband internet access, and Pennsylvania is expected to get $850 million of the money, according to Gov. Tom Wolf’s office.

The Supreme Court is declining to get involved in a case about free speech outside a Pittsburgh abortion clinic.

The high court turned away the case Monday. The court's decision not to hear the case leaves in place a 2019 appeals court decision that upheld a Pittsburgh ordinance creating a 15-foot “buffer zone” where protests are barred around entrances to health care facilities. The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed “sidewalk counseling” within that zone.

The state Department of Agriculture is inviting viewers down a “rabbit hole of Pennsylvania agriculture” during its first ever virtual Pennsylvania Farm Show.

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, it became clear that indoor choral singing was among the riskiest behaviors one could engage in. So the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, like so many group artistic endeavors, hasn’t had any in-person activities for some 10 months.

Pittsburgh-area native Bianca Smith says it’s still “surreal” that she’s about to become the first Black woman to coach in professional baseball. The Boston Red Sox recently announced that they’d hired the 29-year-old as a Minor League coach. 

As the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden approaches, discussions of further violence continue to percolate on mainstream sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as platforms such as Parler. Pittsburgh officials are preparing for possible actions in the city next weekend, in the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania on Sunday joined Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski in calling for Trump to "resign and go away as soon as possible." 

Pennsylvania on Friday released an updated coronavirus vaccine plan that makes more people eligible for shots in the initial phases of the rollout. Health care workers and nursing home residents remain at the front of the line, followed by people 75 years and older and "essential workers" like police officers, grocery store clerks and teachers.

Both chambers of the Pennsylvania General Assembly on Tuesday side-stepped proposed rules changes that would have diminished the power of majority-party leaders to control the legislative agenda.

Charges against two dozen protesters from last summer's demonstrations against police brutality are being refiled, but Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala disagree about the circumstances for that move.

John Fetterman, Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, is taking a definitive step toward running for the state's open U.S. Senate seat in 2022.

Former Pittsburgh Police chief and state representative Dom Costa is running for Allegheny County sheriff.

“Our county and our country are in the midst of unrest and turmoil right now, and I believe that my life has prepared me to lead during these uncertain times,” Costa said in a statement.

A number of the commonwealth’s state and federal prosecutors are planning to press charges against anyone from Pennsylvania found to have been involved in the attack on the U.S. Capitol Wednesday that temporarily disrupted the certification of the nation’s Electoral College votes.

A Republican state senator who was on the scene when a violent mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters commandeered the U.S. Capitol should resign, the top Democrat in the Pennsylvania Senate said Thursday.

Pennsylvania nudged school districts to reopen elementary schools Thursday by changing its official guidance.

Lisa Middleman, who ran an unsuccessful 2019 campaign for Allegheny County District Attorney that nevertheless rallied criminal-justice reformers to her cause, now hopes to hear cases rather than argue them. She intends to run in what will likely be a wide-open contest for one of the open seats on Allegheny County’s Court of Common Pleas this year.  

A victims’ rights constitutional amendment that Pennsylvania voters apparently passed by a wide margin was thrown out Thursday by a divided state court that ruled it bundled too many changes together.